In this town the shops are all the same: Bread, bullets, the usual flowers Are sold but no one -- no one, no one Has a shop for angels, No one sells orchid bread, no one A silver bullet to kill a king. No one in this town has heard Of fox-fire rosaries -- instead They have catechisms of filthy shirts, And their god goes by on crutches In the stench of exhaust fumes and dirty stories. No one is opening -- even on credit -- A shop for the replacement of lost years. No one sells treasure maps. No one Retails a poem at so much per love. No. It is necessary To go down to the river where the bums at evening Assemble their histories like cancelled stamps. There you may find, perhaps, the purple Weather, for nothing; the blue Apples, free; the reddest Antelope, coming down to drink at the river, Given away. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org |